Guild Wars 2

Okay i’ll try to share my build this time.

Keep in mind it’s probably still perfectible.
Also, since the build editor is not yet updated, replace SoM by Skelk Venom.

Power Venoms
SoloQ/TQ

Alright, a few things :

- Don’t ever use all your venoms at once. Carefully use them one after another.

- Be attentive to your teammates position. Venom share radius is actually large enough to make the difference.

- You’ll be resistant enough to get where it’s hot and have your frontliners enjoy the venoms.

- It seems to me most people make the mistake of wanting to put all venoms in their bar. Skale venom is appealing it’s true, but i’d rather take infiltrator signet to have a stun breaker and a gap closer rather than an other venom that doesn’t synergize well with the build.

- Basically most people think venoms = condis. As you an see there is almost no damage condis in this build, all you need is poison to lower your opponent’s heals effectivness. All 3 venoms are CCs, and if you actually chain them carefully, it becomes a nightmare for your opponent. Add another teammate next to you and it gets really hardcore.

- You’ll be quite tough, and every venom hit will heal you while almost multiplying your damage output by 2. No need for crits at this rate.

- No pistol MH, jump in and out of stealth with D/P, manage your condis, immob your opponent in your blind field.

- I’m not sure of the rune set yet, trying vampire atm to see if #4 stacks with leeching venoms. Otherwise i’d go with Strength or Fighter.

This may work well with S/P although i personnaly would really miss stealth.

There’s probably a lot more to say but i’m not a good educator.
Feel free to try it and leave your thoughts ~

Musc

Edit : Something is wrong with the build editor, i attached screenshots of the actual build.

This seems pretty interesting, thanks for posting. I like going without crit, having reliable damage seems preferable to the rng in my view.

Speed runes or maybe even grove runes might work good with this.

I am not sure aboutthe heal venom though in general HiS seems superior due to the condition removal.

Bazzoong.7145:

I am not sure aboutthe heal venom though in general HiS seems superior due to the condition removal.

That’s my thought, but this build seems to work a lot better with a team, so you will probably have someone curing conditions
To be honest, I like this build, and I’d like to try it on Team Arenas

You still get stealth for the (urr…) occasionnal condi management, not the best but enough to avoid getting wrecked.

Skelk venom is potentially 10k healing every 36 seconds (coupled with leeching venoms).

I’ve got a sort like build but that relies on S/P and D/D secondary. So less stealth
10 points in acrobatics instead of trickery for the vigor trait, regeneration on stealth instead of condi removal (due to less stealthing abilities).

Also instead of residual venoms i take panic strike and I have shadowstep instead of skale venom
Motivation: In general, the enemy will be below 50% by the time devourer’s venom works out so it’ll trigger another 5s immob. I switch to D/D which has a “chill aoe” on swap sigil. This compensates my loss of skale venom (which I did use pre-patch). By this time my health will be low enough to use the healing without losing out on potential healing while also dealing extra damage. Backstab-heartseeker combo usually finishes the job, otherwise I throw in some AA.

If by some reason someone else joins the fight (enemy) I’d use the shadowstep stomp.
When this is blocked i’d switch back to S/P for a stunkill (stun the reviver while dealing damage to the downed person, works wonders against a thief reviver using shadow refuge)

Consider as well a sigil of Hydromancy. While I use it with a Condi build it is another cc every 10 seconds and has 3 seconds chill on swap. I couple this with grenth and can lay 10 second + chills without using a venom.

With 30 percent condition duration in a direct damage build this still 4 seconds and the aoe effect of the chill is very handy.

Sigil of Hydromancy is rather bad on a stealth reliant build because the aoe on swap breaks stealth same with the bleed on swap sigil.

I`ve been searching for an idea to make d/p work in spvp for some time the build in the OP might be the way, I must admit that the idea of d/p without any crit did not occur to me. But it seems natural to make a d/p control and cc build the set is ideal for that.

Sigil of hydromancy also consume your venoms on aoe, which is something you want to avoid.
Venoms wasted on pets/clones/minions will hurt you a lot on a 36s CD.

Another thing to point out about leeching venoms is that life steal is not affected by armor.

That’s about +380 fix damage per hit, especially noticable on high damage reduction-low hp builds.
Also, it goes through endure pain.
This is why residual venoms is a must have.

Now, after using this build a few hours yesterday, i’m coming to the conclusion that the “meta thief” will most probably switch to S/P, not this.
Will keep running this though, it’s fun.

muscarine.5136:

Sigil of hydromancy also consume your venoms on aoe, which is something you want to avoid.
Venoms wasted on pets/clones/minions will hurt you a lot on a 36s CD.

Another thing to point out about leeching venoms is that life steal is not affected by armor.

That’s about +380 fix damage per hit, especially noticable on high damage reduction-low hp builds.
Also, it goes through endure pain.
This is why residual venoms is a must have.

Now, after using this build a few hours yesterday, i’m coming to the conclusion that the “meta thief” will most probably switch to S/P, not this.
Will keep running this though, it’s fun.

another reason venomshare sux.

skelk venom = 9573 hp per minute heal (16350 traited (1 strike/leeching))
skelk venom = 159 hp per second heal (272 traited (1 strike/leeching))
withdraw = 18100 hp per minute heal
withdraw = 301 hp per second heal
Hide in shadows = 12440 hp per minute (17014 traited)
Hide in shadows = 207 hp per second heal (284 traited)
If you count the damage/mitigation from condition removal and avoidance from stealth….. the other heals not only BEAT skelk venom but blow it out of the water.
Now is that really worth sacrificing all your defense for ? a bunch of maybe hits and maybe buffs if allies are close enough? low hp, low defense, no invulnerbilty, no protection, no aegis, no blocks etc etc.
Im gonna pass. i guess venoms are “almost there” STILL. Perhaps put them on f2 f3 f4 and replace them with real utilities. right now they are just sub par and garbage UNLESS you use 30/x/30/x/x build and even then your defenseless.
Might i add that skelk venom is probably about 25% less due to half the strikes of venom not hitting.

Dude can you stop copy/paste this to every thread mentionning Skelk venoms ? Thanks.

Some of us try to make use of it, period.

Eh, 1 stun break and the only condition removal you have costs 8 initiative. You still sacrifice way too much self preservation for shoddy team support IMHO.

muscarine.5136:

Dude can you stop copy/paste this to every thread mentionning Skelk venoms ? Thanks.

Some of us try to make use of it, period.

dude can u stop pretending my posts are stopping you from “making use” of the new crappy heal. thanks.

and no i wont stop posting bc i’d like to increase the % chance of the message actually hitting the design team at anet. venoms are a joke and its well known andnobody runs them. outside of this first 1-2 weeks nobody will run them agian …. just a few testers now including me so i wasnt jumping the gun and being biased. its a pidgeonholed no defensive lazy auto attack build that has less total productivity than every other class in the same slot. its a fail and it needs to be passed on.

the numbers dont add up.
the live tests dont add up.
the theories dont even add up.

answer 4 u = NO! Merry X-Mas

MrAmputatoes.6031:

Eh, 1 stun break and the only condition removal you have costs 8 initiative. You still sacrifice way too much self preservation for shoddy team support IMHO.

exactly. running 5 venoms is a nice lil heal but you have no dmg mitigation.
so if ur actually trying to help and fighting this is what it looks like.

venom leeching/skelk venom/residual venoms all give you about 100% of your HP back but that same build makes you take about 300% more dmg due to no blinds, no defensive utilities, no stun breaks, no evades (outside of 2 dodge rolls), no reliable heal outside of first 5-6 seconds. its a really REALLY bad build. if u are ok with hopping in the middle popping all your venoms then going back out and /sleep then hey this is the build for you. if you actually wanna support team andhave fun try somethign else or have anet wake up and be honest about “venoms almost being there”…. although make it truthful next time anet.

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

In WvsW roaming this is useless, because people always do the same: The moment they see you pop Thieves’ Guild, they retreat, because they know you’ll also use your most powerful venoms on them. They kite you for a while, and even if you manage to chase them, your thieves won’t be able to keep your pace. Once the thieves go, they engage again, but now you have no one to share your venoms, so, the entire point of the build goes trough the window. Also, if they are perceptive, they are aware of where you put your ambush trap, since you do an obvious animation.

Then, they proceed to slaughter you bit by bit, since they know you have practically no condition removal, few stunbreakers if any, and little stealth. You have nothing to defend yourself since you have a trap (Ambush) and venoms (Devourer+another) in your bar and your elite is on 150 secs cooldown, and more than half of your traits will be focused on venoms. Your heal will be on a 36 seconds recharge which is enough time to kill you twice with most popular builds.

We are not talking wvw here, my earlier statements are aimed at spvp only.

Thieves guild is bad please do not even mention it. If you can not see why then sorry you are hopeless as a thief.

For wvw you can get all the stat combnations you like not so in spvp, in wvw thieves have no problems whatsoever and there are tons of good builds.

Spvp is where thieves are in trouble, I did not have the time to test the OP build yet, but to me it looks like a decent idea albeit I might modify it to suit by preferences.

Until now in my oppinion only bleed heavy support builds are good for spvp, face it SWORDS SUCK!

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

Gets hardcountered by daggerstorm you will kill yourself….

Kyrion.2749:

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

In WvsW roaming this is useless, because people always do the same: The moment they see you pop Thieves’ Guild, they retreat, because they know you’ll also use your most powerful venoms on them. They kite you for a while, and even if you manage to chase them, your thieves won’t be able to keep your pace. Once the thieves go, they engage again, but now you have no one to share your venoms, so, the entire point of the build goes trough the window. Also, if they are perceptive, they are aware of where you put your ambush trap, since you do an obvious animation.

Man seriusly that ha ve demostrate how lo si he le el of thiefs in this forum, venom share forma zerg stak very well and 1vs1 is a strong build

Then, they proceed to slaughter you bit by bit, since they know you have practically no condition removal, few stunbreakers if any, and little stealth. You have nothing to defend yourself since you have a trap (Ambush) and venoms (Devourer+another) in your bar and your elite is on 150 secs cooldown, and more than half of your traits will be focused on venoms. Your heal will be on a 36 seconds recharge which is enough time to kill you twice with most popular builds.

This have demostrate how low is the level of player in this forum, and that you have never play a venom share in your life, i suggest you to try on yourself that is a strong support build right now in zerg situation and a strong buil in 1vs1 , you have no idea of rotation venom ambush thief guild i can see in your words

At the moment i’m just picturing a venom share thief with thieve’s guild/ambush lurking in shadow refuge waiting for some poor unsuspecting victim to happily stumble by.

Bazzoong.7145:

We are not talking wvw here, my earlier statements are aimed at spvp only.

Thieves guild is bad please do not even mention it. If you can not see why then sorry you are hopeless as a thief.

For wvw you can get all the stat combnations you like not so in spvp, in wvw thieves have no problems whatsoever and there are tons of good builds.

Spvp is where thieves are in trouble, I did not have the time to test the OP build yet, but to me it looks like a decent idea albeit I might modify it to suit by preferences.

Until now in my oppinion only bleed heavy support builds are good for spvp, face it SWORDS SUCK!

Lol stop speaker because if you says thief guild is bad in a venom share this mean you are a very low player! You have not play a venom share that si a strong supporto build in zerg and strong in 1vs1 situation im still laugh at tour post! Sriusly you don’t know he rotation with ambush trap…continue tour bad play..
Come in front of me in game to says this ! Bleed supporto with 1 condition that alla can McLean with condition remove pls male me laugh Moore!

Bazzoong.7145:

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

Gets hardcountered by daggerstorm you will kill yourself….

Come with your bad skill daggerstorm to counter me! A skill that all know how evade! Super lool

simonerd.8672:

Kyrion.2749:

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

In WvsW roaming this is useless, because people always do the same: The moment they see you pop Thieves’ Guild, they retreat, because they know you’ll also use your most powerful venoms on them. They kite you for a while, and even if you manage to chase them, your thieves won’t be able to keep your pace. Once the thieves go, they engage again, but now you have no one to share your venoms, so, the entire point of the build goes trough the window. Also, if they are perceptive, they are aware of where you put your ambush trap, since you do an obvious animation.

Man seriusly that ha ve demostrate how lo si he le el of thiefs in this forum, venom share forma zerg stak very well and 1vs1 is a strong build

Then, they proceed to slaughter you bit by bit, since they know you have practically no condition removal, few stunbreakers if any, and little stealth. You have nothing to defend yourself since you have a trap (Ambush) and venoms (Devourer+another) in your bar and your elite is on 150 secs cooldown, and more than half of your traits will be focused on venoms. Your heal will be on a 36 seconds recharge which is enough time to kill you twice with most popular builds.

This have demostrate how low is the level of player in this forum, and that you have never play a venom share in your life, i suggest you to try on yourself that is a strong support build right now in zerg situation and a strong buil in 1vs1 , you have no idea of rotation venom ambush thief guild i can see in your words

Anothere point is using 20 points in acro you have enough survivability if you are a skilled player for sue ambush and two venom taking out from tour bar shadow refuge ..

simonerd.8672:

Bazzoong.7145:

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

Gets hardcountered by daggerstorm you will kill yourself….

Come with your bad skill daggerstorm to counter me! A skill that all know how evade! Super lool

You do understand that daggerstorm reflects projectiles and that your thieves npcs can not dodge do you?

Why I am even posting this?

This thread has derailed badly…

Bazzoong.7145:

Sigil of Hydromancy is rather bad on a stealth reliant build because the aoe on swap breaks stealth same with the bleed on swap sigil.

I`ve been searching for an idea to make d/p work in spvp for some time the build in the OP might be the way, I must admit that the idea of d/p without any crit did not occur to me. But it seems natural to make a d/p control and cc build the set is ideal for that.

It timing. You steal to the target and do a weapon swap. You then stealth and drop your caltrops . Load the venom you want and proceed. Swap before stealth.

Or you can be in stealth near a target, swap just before the reveal and chill him. Launch your attacks dodge and stealth. I do not see the issue. Obviously it depends on the type of build you have and mine a Condi build. I steal to target with d/d , weapon swap to p/d stealth and then autoattack from hiding laying on poison, weakness, bleed and chilled in seconds. If I do have caltrops on the bar I can drop from hiding before my sneak attack with pistol. After sneak attack shadowstrike for torment putting you at distance again. with all these attacks a chilled target is easier to hit.

I tried skelk for a while using both IMPROV and the 20 second cooldown reduction. The improv in combination with other toolskills on the util bar made it slightly better overall but I went back to withdraw. (It just better from my perspective to get an instant recharge even if it “only a 1 in 5 chance” and you still “win” if improv instant recharges another skill on your bar instead)

I just can not wait for that heal and found myself stealth and avoiding combat more as I waited on it to at least partially recharge.

The only thing I can think of that will save is something like a grandmaster trait that says “On application of a venom lose one condition” or some means of transferring one condition to a foe per strike. That or getting those recharge times down.

I will try it a bit more but even in a venomshare build I would lean towards using withdraw.

Hello again,

I started testing this build and it works pretty good, the only 2 times I died in 5 matches random join with 4 wins was when outnumberd 3v1 and the lost game was 5v4 against us.

I suggest mug instead of sundering strikes and thrill of the crime instead of throw feathers (you might want to try 10 acrobatics with reuced fall damage and blinding powered on fall damage instead of 10 trickery.

I used HiS instead ofthe new venom, roll for initiative skale venom, ice drake venom and basilisk venom. Offset was short bow.

Runes of speed, sigil of force and sigil of leeching, sigil of leeching again on the bow.

The lifedrain adds up nicely, defence is decent, mobility rather bad.

The key seems to be to pool initiative and time the venoms clever.

I rather enjoyed this build and it is a nice break from my usual condition build.

Thanks again for posting OP this is a nice idea, I will try this out and tweak it a bit.

Kyrion.2749:

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

In WvsW roaming this is useless, because people always do the same: The moment they see you pop Thieves’ Guild, they retreat, because they know you’ll also use your most powerful venoms on them. They kite you for a while, and even if you manage to chase them, your thieves won’t be able to keep your pace.

I’m not going to answer the rest of your post since I don’t run those skills myself (cause yes, running all those rly hinders defensive abilities, but I do run venom share with 2 venoms and thieves guild when roaming, 3 venoms with basilisk if in team).

It’s easy to kill someone with this combination as long as they don’t clear their immob. You stealth yourself and summon the thieves. Use devourer’s venom once your thieves come up. The enemy will obviously dodge immediately to avoid your first attack, so wait ‘till right after the dodge and hit him. You’ll now have a 05s immob on him and your thieves guild start attacking, which gives a 7s immob (.5s delay from 7.5s theory). If you’re lucky and the enemy triggered his condi clear too soon, the melee thief will still put a 2.5-5s immob on him.
If by any chance you run a sword main, you can put another 1.5s immob on the enemy if he still gets out.
With my own build I also have a 05.5s immob once the enemy falls below 50% health. And this all while thieves guild is hitting him.

Problematic is when they have a long dodge/block ability. Guardians, warrior shield, thief with #3 shortbow spam. But like any build, everything has their weaknesses and this has to be compensated in other tactics (like instead of wasting the second part of your devourer’s venom, just wait it out, or use a stun just when the thief’s #3 runs out)

Bazzoong.7145:

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

Gets hardcountered by daggerstorm you will kill yourself….

Devourer’s venom + black powder and have fun. The ranged thief will die but hey you still have free hits together with the melee thief because the enemy is stuck and not even dodging ^^

PS: a 05s = the bottox .. seriously? Do I have to type my text out for that?

^°Black Powder is a projectile finisher, so is the scorpion wire that the melee thief uses, again Daggerstorm REFLECTS projectiles. Now I am not going to explain the rest, please THINK.

Bazzoong.7145:

^°Black Powder is a projectile finisher, so is the scorpion wire that the melee thief uses, again Daggerstorm REFLECTS projectiles. Now I am not going to explain the rest, please THINK.

I’ll explain it,
Use devourer’s with a few melee hits, and then use black powder
Also blank shot on his position, blind field still works without being blinded yourself. And who cares that the melee thief uses scorpion wire on himself? He doesn’t die from it and still gets free hits
Dagger storm is easy to kill.

Also another thing you can use is “bountiful theft” + pistol whip. Stability is a priorited steal on that trait so you’ll also get extra dmg from the ranged thief

Bazzoong.7145:

simonerd.8672:

Bazzoong.7145:

simonerd.8672:

Go to try 20 0 30 20 0 with ambush trap and thief guild before speaking!

Gets hardcountered by daggerstorm you will kill yourself….

Come with your bad skill daggerstorm to counter me! A skill that all know how evade! Super lool

You do understand that daggerstorm reflects projectiles and that your thieves npcs can not dodge do you?

Why I am even posting this?

This thread has derailed badly…

Have you understand that the only think you have to do it is stay away from daggerstorm dodge it and it is uselsess elite! The only way it can be use is with signet of malice inside a group of enemy for refull your life but in 1 vs 1 is useless ad spvp situation, you just will due at he end of daggerstorm, the best simple useless elite that all goods player can evade! Try to evade thiefs guild plus ambush lests see if you are still alive

OK i want suggest a good venom share right now tested in solo queue and WvW zerg and Also 1vs1 i play condition since beta with thief and this is really strong build venomshare, 20 0 30 20 0

III VIII

IV IX XII

V VIII

Supuperior runes of krait 2 superiore rune of centaur 2 superiore runes of afflicted 2

Weapon PD SB superior sigill of agony on pistol minor sigillo of corruption on dagger superior sigil of agony on bow.

Amulet and jowiel carrion

Utility: heal skelk venom, spider venom, skale venom, ambush trap, elite thiefs guild.

I hope help this community sharing my personal build!